


Take Me Home, Country Road

by storyspinner70



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguity, Case Fic, Gen, Laundry, POV Alternating, POV First Person, POV Outsider, POV Third Person, Slice of Life, Surprise Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 03:55:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18438533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyspinner70/pseuds/storyspinner70
Summary: The bunker is feeling kind of crowded and Sam and Dean take off for some much needed time to themselves. A couple of simple salt and burns later, they find themselves in a bucolic southern town. When the hunt ends up being something no one could ever have predicted, the boys aren’t sure exactly what to do. They take some time in the local laundromat to try and figure things out.Written for the 2019 Gencest Bang.Art by the amazing Amberdreams





	Take Me Home, Country Road

For the 2019 Gencest Bang

 **Author:** storyspinner70

 **Artist:** [Amberdreams](https://amberdreams.livejournal.com/)

 **Summary:** The bunker is feeling kind of crowded and Sam and Dean take off for some much needed time to themselves. A couple of simple salt and burns later, they find themselves in a bucolic southern town. When the hunt ends up being something no one could ever have predicted, the boys aren’t sure exactly what to do. They take some time in the local laundromat to try and figure things out.

 **Warnings:** Some Angst

 **A/N:** Art is by the amazing Amberdreams. I love the detail and how perfect the boys are. Did I say it was amazing? If not, well, it's amazing. Go [here and see it](https://amberdreams.livejournal.com/611461.html), or hit the link at her artist name to see more of her talent at work.

This is my first 1 st  person POV and my first with shifting POVs. I fought like crazy with that, but ultimately liked the outsider’s POV being his actual POV. *nervous*

Freeport, Kansas and surrounding towns are real places. It’s not a ghost town though. As of the 2010 census, five whole people live there. There is no laundromat there, though, in fact there’s not much of anything that I could see. It is 221 miles (3hr 21 minutes) from Lawrence. My apologies to the residents for taking massive liberties.

Also, I borrowed bits from the differing kinds of djinn they’ve encountered in the series and mashed them up with things that aren’t the least little bit true. You’re welcome. lol

Also also, there are deliberately ambiguous elements in this here story. Let me know how you interpret them should you find them. I’d love to know.

 

**Take me Home, Country Road**

 

It was a Tuesday. One like any other in any small town in the south. The same kind of Tuesday I’d had hundreds of times. That was both the curse and the joy of living in such a tiny place. It kind of depended how you looked on things whether you hated it or loved it. I always tried not to look too closely. Contentment was next door to happiness, and I’d take what I could get.

That normal everyday Tuesday changed though, round about noon.

*

They were tall, the both of them, though one them had a good four or five inches over the other. They were good looking in a way you didn’t see much outside of a TV set. Hard in a way I hadn’t seen in awhile. I knew the kinds of things that made people hard like that. I kept an eye out because anything could happen and I wasn’t about to let it happen in my laundromat. It was all I had left.

They moved from one end of the laundromat to another, steps in sync in a way that took years, and that kept my attention. They didn’t look like brothers. From the eye rolling and snark, they didn’t look like lovers, either. Maybe they served together. They had that edge – the bowed back that came from carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders just a little too long.

One of them caught my eye as they stripped – the shorter one, though he was still half a head taller than me, so that was clearly relative – I raised an eyebrow but he just lifted a chin. I took that to mean they had no intention of actually getting naked. The tall one was pulling something out of a plastic bag and reading the back of it intently, but the other just jerked the man’s pants out of his other hand and shook his head. The tall one was the current owner of an impressive scowl, and I suddenly missed my brother like breathing.

I couldn’t figure out what they were tossing around at first, but then I realized they were peroxiding their clothes on one of my folding tables – rust red marks and the sour smell of peroxide and copper left behind for only a moment, then whisked away with a towel that had seen better days in some dank motel somewhere. I dropped the lid of the washing machine a bit louder than necessary, but I knew there wasn’t a chance of either of these men forgetting I existed. Still, a little reminder didn’t seem out of the way right then.

They were in boxers and bare feet; t-shirts that were a little too worn, a little baggy around the yellowing collar. The shorter one stretched then grimaced. There was a short fight then the t-shirts joined the rest of the clothes. A raised eyebrow and a deliberate finger ensured he put them in the proper washer. I cleared my throat when he slammed the quarter holder in entirely too sharply.

He was more careful with the next. I didn’t fool myself that I had all that much to do with it.

One of them pulled their phone out, and the other carefully rearranged things in their mended and weathered duffels. They argued over who got the seat closest to the washing machine and who would perch next to the folding table. It seemed neither was too fond of folding and it looked for a moment like they were going to brawl right there in the middle of the store. Brothers then.

The cold stillness that seemed to pervade the air around them when Molly McDuff came in to drop off her husband’s suits had me revising that back to brothers in arms. The haunted shadow to the tall one’s eyes when he turned around after watching her leave and didn’t immediately see his companion had me settling in on my opinion.

The too lingering, too soft sweep of his hand across the back of the other’s neck when he’d reappeared with drinks in hand though, had me starting all over again. I’d never put much stock in auras and crystals and all that other nonsense, but for a second, it was like the air rippled around them – a moment of movement that bound them together apart from everyone else. I wondered idly what would happen if anyone tried to come between them.

Lovers, brothers, soldiers. I couldn’t pin them down, and for someone who prided himself on being able to tell what a person was like immediately, it set me on edge. Hell, half the reason I was even still alive today was because I’d been able to read people. That had saved me more times than I could count, and it wasn’t always in some foreign place with names I couldn’t even begin to say. No, there was a story there and bless Franny Parker’s gossiping heart I wanted to know what it was.

I had dry cleaning to do, but I didn’t want to let the men out of my sight. Unfortunately, that meant I had nothing to do but mull them over in my mind and fold the same shirts over and over until they left.

The sudden hush when the swish of the washing machine ground to a halt was both a blessing and a curse. I never liked too much quiet. You get too deep in your head when it’s still like that. I learned that the hard way when one explosion became one too many for my ears. It was weeks before I could hear the shouting and even then it was muffled and always too low.

I watched the shorter one go completely still when Officer Sutton came in for his uniforms, the stranger’s face toward his cards but his eyes slitted and dark and focused on the policeman. I’d have wagered every dime I made for a month he’d been caught in a barrage of bullets more than once in his life. I’d seen that singular focused look on more faces than I cared to account for. I’d include my own in that count, but I avoided more than the barest glimpse of myself for years.

I could feel Jim stiffen when he took in my customers and I prayed he’d leave things be. I was reacting to the same things he was – the scars, the bruises and wounds that looked too fresh to be anything but trouble, the unnatural stillness, the deep crater in the middle of the shorter one’s palm that could only be made by one thing – but I didn’t need the hell they looked so capable of bringing into my laundromat. Jim deliberately eased his stance, and I breathed a little easier.

The men tipped their heads smoothly in reply to the officer doing the same. He lingered for a moment but left with promises to tell Janey I’d said hello. The men looked at each other as the door swung closed and it was like they’d had an entire conversation with nothing but their stare and the flutter of lashes.

The tall one had gone through the clothes and put some in the dryer and some back into the washer for a second go. I got the impression that they’d be out of here in a second if they felt the need and the hairs raised on the back of my neck. Only two kinds of people reacted to the cops that way – people who didn’t like the police and people the police didn’t like. I wasn’t taking bets which type they were.

***************************

Dean hated the laundromat. Of course they could head back to the bunker and wash clothes in their own space, but that was kind of the problem. It was no longer their own space. Clearly the refugees had to go somewhere right now, he just wished it had been somewhere else.

The bunker that had been cavernous, empty spaces surrounding the few rooms they took for themselves felt crowded now. Chock full of the wrong faces on the most painful of memories. It was like being surrounded by pod people – almost but not quite right.

He’d forgotten. Just once. Charlie had been the sometimes annoying little sister they never had, and he was halfway through a shared memory when the poorly hidden sorrow and pity on her face registered. _Right. Wrong Charlie._

He’d gathered Sam and left the bunker the next morning. Sam followed as he always did but this time there were no questions – just quiet conversation and those careful side eyed glances he clearly thought Dean wouldn’t notice.

Sam found them hunts. Dean drove. The world tilted back in line.

A lady in white in Nebraska. A pair of wendigo in Minnesota. Poltergeist in Montana. A hellhound and a malevolent phantom trucker in Utah.

It was when Sam had completely stopped eating his breakfast in a diner somewhere in New Mexico that Dean knew he’d found something big.

Freeport Kansas’ population had slowly dwindled year by year. It wasn’t long until there was twenty, then ten, then five, then none. The only people that ever passed through there after that were either lost or wanted to gawk at a bonafide ghost town.

Things went along as they tend to and Freeport sank into disrepair, popping up only in random memory and ever vigilant history. Until people suddenly started visiting the town every other week and some of them never made it back.

Dean was mildly interested – until Sam slid his laptop across the table, an interview playing on the screen. It was a young couple and their children who had found themselves on the road to Freeport with no recollection of how they got there. Sam pointed wordlessly to a little girl in the background that they could barely hear. She was talking about magic.

“It was just like the Disney castle, momma! A whole city! Just poof out of the air!” She’d thrown her hands wide, twirling like a Disney princess while her mother looked on with a pained smile.

Two days and a couple spells later, Dean and Sam rode through what was no longer a ghost town. There wasn’t much info at the diner, but the food was hot and filling and the people were friendly without seeming overly interested in a couple people clearly just passing through.

They visited each shop, their EMF meter set to be silent but easy for Dean to see in Sam’s jacket pocket. The heavily tattooed man behind the counter of the bait shop tipped his head as they walked by, but his eyes flickered for a moment as they passed. A djinn, then. A djinn that would clearly know who they were but was acting like he didn’t.

Fair enough; they could do the same.

They settled on doing laundry at the place down the street, so they could keep track of the djinn and try to figure out how much the other people in town were involved. From what they’d seen so far, it seemed likely the townsfolk had no idea they were living past lives in a town that no longer existed. Dean had seen Sam’s face go soft and a little sad when the sweet old lady at the flower shop had slipped him a bud of what he’d told her was his favorite flower.

Dean rested his hand on Sam’s back for a moment then they’d moved the car in front of the laundromat and gotten settled. For a second, he pretended there was no ghost town, no djinn and no group of refugees from some distant nightmare of an apocalypse world staking claim to spaces they had no right to.

He lived in his moment of rebellious selfishness like he did everything else. It rode his skin just like their thrift shop clothes – just another layer of something that never quite fit. He watched Sam studiously separate their clothes and breathed.

Sure he felt guilty. They’d been gone for weeks and hadn’t had contact in the last few days. Hell, they barely told anyone where they were going.

But guilt to him was like his heartbeat. Sometimes quiet as a whisper and sometimes as loud as a drum, but always there. He could carry it – was _used_ to carrying it. He could carry anything, so Sam didn’t have to. Not anymore.

 _His brother._ Dean had thought about letting him go at least once every day since Sam came with him from Stanford. He wanted him to have the picket fence and the 2.5 kids. _He did._ But he just couldn’t pry his hands off Sam long enough for his brother to actually have it.

There wasn’t one other person in this world that Dean trusted with Sam’s safety, and that included Sam himself, if he was starkly honest. Hell if Dean was being totally honest, he didn’t even trust _himself_ with that sometimes. He’d failed Sam too many times to count, but no matter how they’d shredded and betrayed each other, there was no one else they’d ever trust to put them back together.

So Dean woke up every morning and made sure that no matter what else, his brother was as safe as Dean could physically make him.

As for Dean? Well, the world would move along without Dean in it, and Sam would be just fine eventually. He’d grow another grief beard and lose a little more weight, but the world needed at least one of them and Sam would see that sooner or later.

He’d buckle down, start taking care of himself like he did everyone else and he’d soldier on while Dean waited for him in their ridiculous shared heaven. If that even existed anymore. Hard to tell with whatever was going on in heaven, he guessed, but they’d find out sooner or later.

No, Dean wasn’t worried about himself so much as who would keep Sam safe after he was gone.

Dean was working on that, though. He might even trust Sam to do it if Sam kept it together like he had been. He’d just have to see.

He was getting restless. At least when they were on their own and waiting for something they could watch TV, do research or, Dean’s favorite, clean their weapons. It was the most soothing thing he knew to do but drive, the movements as instinctual to him as breathing for decades now. First Sam’s then his.

Cleaning Sam’s weapon was just another layer to guarantee his safety, and there was little as soothing to him as the slide of metal and wood over his palm and fingers, catching against callouses, gathering warmth from his skin. The acrid, soothing scent of a mixture of smoke, oil and blood that no amount of cleaning could wash away.

**************

Sam turned around right after the first customer he’d seen left the laundromat – a snooty looking lady that seemed more concerned with her pointy shoes getting dirty on the worn and cracked linoleum than she did with her husband’s clearly wellmade suits – and his heart dropped when he didn’t see Dean right behind him where he had been. When they found out it was a djinn, Sam was horrified. He kept their various run ins with djinns on a technicolor loop in his head – punctuated and underpinned by the fact that Dean nearly stayed in that first, terrible fantasy world.

He’d used his phone to text Dean – a discreet way to think his way through what was going on without having to say anything out loud that no one else needed to hear.

_Djinns can make people think they’re in a fantasy world but it’s never corporeal_

_How is he doing this_

_They’re shapeshifters but no one else here appears to be either other creatures or the people that recently disappeared_

_How would it be possible to read the minds of dead people? Are they even all dead? Is this just a random town setup or is it actually Freeport from the past?_

_How has he been able to sustain it for so long?_

_Was it more of the poison?_

Dean rolled his eyes and sent a message back: _What do I pay you for? Figure it out Scully._

 _This again,_ Sam replied.

_Yep_

_Jerk_

_Bitch_

The more Sam thought about the whole situation, the more worried he got, and when Dean wasn’t where he was supposed to be, Sam immediately feared the worse. He twisted around, searching for his brother only to find him striding from the back of the laundromat with drinks in hand. Sam ran his eyes over him as he tried to control his breathing.

He was fine. He was here. Sam could see his veins twisting under his skin, the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Relief and anger and fear were snaking through his blood and sinew and cartilage and Sam didn’t know if he wanted to hug Dean or punch him in the mouth for scaring him in the first place.

He settled on clasping Dean on the back of the neck, feeling him warm and alive under his fingers. He watched Dean smiling at him as he offered Sam a soda and, all at once, Sam had a horrifying thought. What if this wasn’t real? What if _this_ was the fantasy world? What if they were dying, right then and all of this was nothing more than a dream? What if this wasn’t Sam’s Dean, and they hadn’t been on the road the last few weeks?

 _What if it didn’t matter?_ A small thought, but one that started Sam’s heart pounding. _You’re happy here, right? With whatever Dean that is? Why question it? Just this once. Would it really hurt to let something just be?_

Sam’s smiled dropped and his eyes widened, the slippery slide of his fingers across Dean’s skin becoming a clutching hold on his arm. Dean reached for Sam immediately, concern shadowing his face in an instant, searching Sam’s eyes for a clue to what was going on. It only took a moment, Dean’s face smoothing out and softening, that half smile curving his mouth – the one he saved for times it was too painful for a full one.

“ _Not_ Poughkeepsie, Sam.” His hand was firm on Sam’s shoulder and his eyes bored into his brother’s and Sam...Sam could breathe again. They settled in to finish their laundry and wait to see if the djinn made a move.

The laundromat was mostly quiet, only the swish of laundry, the clack of the machines and the tick tick tick of the clock high on the wall cracked the silence. Sam hadn’t always liked the quiet. Too many things to think about. Too much to remember.

It was alright today. Here in this ghost town. This dream world. Today it was okay.

Sam was searching the internet for anything that would prove that this Freeport was or was not the Freeport of the past. He’d just found an article about the decline of the town and the fate of the few remaining people who had ever lived here when Dean went still and silent. Sam froze, as well.

The thump of the door closing and the cop passing by them explained everything. If this was the Freeport of the past, when was it? Were Sam and Dean wanted? Would someone in such a small town even know about them if they were?

After a few tense moments, the sheriff nodded to them and left. Dean unbent and they were back counting minutes by machinery cycles. He was halfway through the latest article when he had the answers he needed.

Carson Whitley was the last person to move out of Freeport. At 86, the former laundromat owner hadn’t been able to continue to live in a town all by himself, so he moved to the assisted living center in nearby Harper, Kansas. Sam texted the information to Dean and stepped outside to make a quick call.

When he came back, he had one word for Dean and a lifetime of regret for the man behind the counter.

“Coma.”

**************

The djinn proved quite easy to kill, but before Dean bashed his head in, he allowed the djinn a moment to gloat – hoping for an explanation.

“It’s the greatest thing a djinn has ever done. It’ll be remembered and copied for years,” he’d crowed, unconcerned with his looming death. “Maybe centuries! Gave him just enough poison. Kept him barely alive and dreaming. I can’t do that, you know. I’m not that kind of genie. Ah, but all this? This is all me.”

The djinn patted the counter. “I didn’t just walk in his dreams or show him some perfect world,” the djinn leaned forward, his eyes electric and his teeth razor sharp. “I made his dream real. A living, breathing, solid dream.”

Half an hour later, Dean was scrubbing djinn brains off his boots and Sam was brooding.

“We’ll stop by the old folks home on the way out of town. Take care of that other djinn.”

“What if we didn’t?” Sam asked.

“What?”

“Everyone we’ve met have been so happy and content, I just...”

“We can’t just let a monster feed on him until he dies, Sam.”

“Why not? He’s happy, it’s happy. I’ll keep checking on Whitley and when he dies, we’ll take care of the djinn before it can move on.”

“The town isn’t real, Sam. None of this is real.”

“It’s real to them,” Sam swept his arm through the air indicating the few people laughing on the sidewalks and bustling about their day. “And the djinn said he was the one making everything corporeal. Once we leave here, the spell is null. This place will vanish. No one will be able to find it ever again.”

Dean dragged his fingers through his hair. “We’d be leaving a monster, Sam.”

“I know.”

Dean leaned his arms on Baby and watched the people come and go. Sam leaned, close and warm against his side.

“If we hear one thing about this town popping up again, you’re dragging your happy ass back here even if Whitley is still alive and you’re taking care of it, you hear me?”

“Absolutely,” Sam said.

Dean shook his head and wrenched Baby’s door open. “Well? Where to?”

“There’s a rougarou in Lousiana,” Sam said, like they weren’t three and a half hours from home and a good day or two from the Big Easy.

“Those things are nasty,” Dean agreed, “better go take care of that.”

Sam’s soft, “Yeah,” was drowned out by Baby’s growl and the opening strains of Bob Seger’s _Mainstreet_. They took Grand straight out of Freeport and watched it shimmer and fade to ruins. Sam kept his eye on it until it was just a memory, then settled in for a ride.

“I’m hungry,” he complained. “Stop at the first place, would you?”

“Fine,” Dean said, “but if you try to order me something healthy, I’ll change your Tinder profile again.”

“You’re not exactly young anymore, you know?” Sam said, exasperated. “A few vegetables aren’t going to kill you.”

“Cheese is a vegetable.”

“Cheese is _not_ a vegetable, Dean.”

“Well, lettuce and tomato are. And what about pickle? That’s like three vegetables on one hamburger! I think that’s pretty damn healthy!”

“Dean…”

***************************

I waited for the air to settle after they left, but it never seemed to. It was like those men left a permanent rift in the atmosphere of the laundromat – hell the whole town. They hadn’t left the laundromat long when there was some kind of… _ripple_ through the entire town. It was like a sonic wave or being on the edges of a huge mortar blast. I don’t know any other way to put it. Somewhere, in the back of my head, it was like I’d been waiting for it, really, and I held my breath waiting for something else to happen. Nothing ever did.

*

There was a silence I couldn’t really explain as I walked the 500 feet of sidewalk to the store the next morning. Something felt off kilter; wrong. I couldn’t say for sure what I was feeling, but something was different. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I got up at 6:30 like every other morning and dragged down to the corner for some coffee – black and strong, not that fancy nonsense everyone drinks these days – then headed to my store. I stopped by Maybelle’s to tell her how lovely her flower arrangements were (like I’d done for years now) and continued along the cracked, slowly fraying sidewalk.

The air got thick round about McMillan’s, the store closed and dark. Something kept picking at the back of my head but I couldn’t quite figure it out. _Eh, too many blows to the head would slow you down some. It was to be expected._ Still, McMillan always had his tackle shop open before dawn – everyone knew the best fish were out at daybreak. I puzzled a bit, but moved along.

McMillan’s was just a short blip on an otherwise textbook Tuesday. Wake up, shave, shower and dress (brown pants and tan shirt on Tuesdays), grab coffee at Marta’s, compliment Maybelle, stop by the tackle – wait, we never had a tackle shop. Where had _that_ came from?

Frowning, I stopped at the stoop of the laundromat. We always had to go to Danville or Argonia for bait, or dig it or fish it ourselves. I shook my head sharply. The war must have been twenty years ago now, and I still couldn’t remember for shit some days.

There was a halo, just for a moment, a clarity I didn’t remember having for years. I could see, as if from a great distance, a tall man talking to someone even taller. _It’s the entire town Sammy. What are we supposed to do?_ A second later, it was gone.

The doctors said this could happen. I didn’t pay them much mind, but looked like they were right. Hallucinations. Confusion. Seemed like I was headed down my final pathway. I spent a moment to wonder if my son would move to Freeport and take over the laundromat after I was gone, but then shook my head.

There wasn’t time for that. Jim would be coming in for his uniforms after lunch, and my press was on the blink. _I hated ironing creases and he was so picky about starch. I’d just about decided to teach Janey how to do it herself, but I think Jim used the trip to the laundromat more to escape the station for a few minutes than anything else._ Molly would drop by sometime today too, the click clack of those pointy toed heels she thought made her look so high society sounding like clockwork against the cracking tile. _I’ll probably have to move buttons again. God forbid Frankie admit he’d gained five more pounds. Much easier to blame my dry cleaning for shrinking his suits._

I stood for a moment, missing stores and tall complicated men far from my mind. The morning was still, no sounds in the laundromat but the clicking hiss of compressors and the old timey tick tick tick of the clock on the wall. Dust swirled in the sunshine and I pressed my hand to the slick enameled metal of the nearest washer.

I loved this town. Always had. I was going to miss it. Someday soon, I’d move on to where ever I was going and the laundromat would be in someone else’s hands.

But not today. _Not today._

Tuesdays always were my favorite days.

**Author's Note:**

> Why yes, I did have a djinn that use people as food run a bait shop. I thought it was pretty fitting.


End file.
